Big Blue View
The New York Giants wrapped up their most promising preseason in many years with a 42-10 victory over the New England Patriots on Thursday evening. It wasn’t too long ago that Giants fans would wonder who they might pick up off the waiver wire to fortify a roster that seemed underwhelming at multiple positions. Things seem to be different now. The team seems to have good depth at a number of positions, and some hard cutdown choices will have to be made.
Let’s see who Pro Football Focus thought played well and who didn’t, and what snap counts may or may not be telling us about the decisions looming for this – dare I say? – intriguing team.
Let’s start with the quarterback, and look at his entire pre-season, not just his final pre-season game:
OK, that’s not Jaxson Dart. It’s 2017 pre-eason Patrick Mahomes. You think the Chiefs knew they had something special? 91.8 passing grade, 4 TDs, 0 INTs, 8 big-time throws and only 3 turnover-worthy plays for the rookie. Yet Mahomes didn’t play a single down until the final game of the season, when Kansas City already had their playoff spot locked up. Instead, Alex Smith, a very good but not great quarterback, started for the 2017 Chiefs.
Dart’s rookie year preseason hasn’t been quite as spectacular, but it’s been pretty darn good:
People often forget what PFF tells us about what their grade represents. In brief, PFF doesn’t know what the play call is, whether the quarterback made the read the offensive coordinator thought he should make, whether the receiver ran the right or wrong route, etc. What they do know is: The QB threw the ball. Did he throw it well or poorly? Was it a difficult (e.g., deep, tight window) or an easy (short pitch-and-catch to a wide-open target) pass to complete? If incomplete, was it the QB’s or the receiver’s fault? PFF starts from a neutral 60.0 baseline and then adds or subtracts points depending on the answers to these questions. It does not evaluate the mental part of the game, which is obviously a huge part of what makes a quarterback successful. Criticize them for that if you wish, but don’t say they didn’t tell you, and don’t think that anyone outside the locker room really knows the answer to that question.
Once you understand that a PFF grade is about the physical/mechanical aspects of a player’s performance, the grades make more sense. So: In Game 2 Jaxson Dart went 14 of 16 for 137 yards but only graded 66.8, while last night he went only 6 of 12 for 81 yards but graded 93.0. Why? The supplemental numbers tell us. Last week he had zero big-time throws. Everything was short or at best intermediate – his ADOT was a tiny 4.1 yards. He was highly efficient, but those 14 completions only added a little bit to the baseline 60.0 because they were throws any QB should...
